In this chapter from Exam Ref 70-247 Configuring and Deploying a Private Cloud (MCSE) you'll learn how to integrate several different System Center products, allowing them to build off each other’s functionality. You’ll also learn about Service Provider Foundation, and Microsoft Azure Pack for Windows Server, which allow you to customize the way that users of your private cloud interact with the infrastructure.

The System Center products integrate with one another. You can leverage the functionality of one product, such as Operations Manager’s performance and availability monitoring, with the automation capabilities of Orchestrator, and the incident and problem management functionality of Service Manager. In this chapter you’ll learn how to integrate several different System Center products, allowing them to build off each other’s functionality. You’ll also learn about Service Provider Foundation, and Microsoft Azure Pack for Windows Server, which allow you to customize the way that users of your private cloud interact with the infrastructure.

Objectives in this chapter:

Objective 4.1: Configure private cloud integration

Objective 4.2: Configure integration of private and public clouds

Objective 4.1: Configure private cloud integration

This objective deals with integrating Operations Manager with Service Manager, and Virtual Machine Manager. You’ll also learn about the Orchestrator integration packs (IPs), which allow you to use each System Center product’s functionality when building automation runbooks. You’ll learn about other non-Operations Manager connectors that are available, as well as how to integrate VMM with the new IP address management feature of Windows Server 2012.

This section covers the following topics:

Integrating Operations Manager

Orchestrator integration packs

Other System Center connectors

Integrating IPAM with VMM

Integrating Operations Manager

Operations Manager is Microsoft’s enterprise monitoring solution. When integrated with other products in the System Center suite, you can use it as a source of incidents and problems for Service Manager, and to extend the management and monitoring functionality of VMM. You can also use Operations Manager events to trigger Orchestrator runbook automation.

Integrating Operations Manager with Service Manager

The Operations Manager alert connector for Service Manager allows you to automatically create Service Manager incidents based on Operations Manager alerts. An Operations Manager alert is created in Operations Manager when an object that Operations Manager monitors experiences a change that is deemed worthy of attention, such as a hardware or software failure occurring on a monitored server. There are two types of Operations Manager connectors for Service Manager: the alert connector, and the configuration item (CI) connector. The CI connector imports objects that Operations Manager has discovered into the Service Manager database. Alert connectors bring alert information into Service Manager.

To create the alert connector, perform the following steps:

In the Administration workspace of the Server Manager console, click Connectors.

On the General page of the Operations Manager Alert Connector Wizard, provide a name for the alert connector.

On the Server Details page, shown in Figure 4-1, specify the name of the Operations Manager server and a Run As account that has permission to connect to Operations Manager. Ensure that you use the Test Connection button to verify that the account works and has appropriate permissions.

On the Alert Routing Rules page, click Add to add an alert routing rule. An alert routing rule allows you to specify which Service Manager incident template will be used to create an incident based on an Operations Manager alert.

In the Add Alert Routing Rule dialog box, shown in Figure 4-2, provide the following information:

Rule Name The name of the alert routing rule.

Template The Service Manager incident template that will be used when creating the Service Manager incident.

Criteria Type Here you can select the conditions that trigger the alert routing rule. You can choose between the alert being generated by a specific Operations Manager management pack, being generated by a specific computer or security group, a custom field, or an Operations Manager monitoring class.

Select Alert Severity And Priority Allows you to specify the alert priorities and severities that will trigger the alert routing rule.

FIGURE 4-2 Alert routing rule

As Figure 4-3 shows, alerts that don’t match any of your configured rules will automatically be created as incidents using the Operations Manager Incident Template.

On the Schedule page, select the frequency at which Service Manager will query the Operations Manager server for alerts. You can also configure the connector so that alerts within Operations Manager will be closed when the incident that relates to the alert is resolved or closed in Service Manager. You can also configure Service Manager to automatically mark incidents as Resolved if the incident that triggered the alert in Operations Manager is closed. Figure 4-4 shows these settings.

Integrating Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager

To be able to monitor your organization’s virtualization layer when you are using a System Center 2012 and System Center 2012 R2 managed private cloud, you need to integrate Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager.

Integrating Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager provides you with the following dashboards and views, as shown in Figure 4-6:

To integrate Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager, you need to configure the connector between VMM and Operations Manager. Prior to configuring the connection between VMM and Operations Manager, you need to ensure that you perform the following prerequisite configuration steps:

Install the Operations Manager console on to the VMM server.

Install the following Operations Manager management packs on the Operations Manager server:

SQL Server Core Library version 6.0.5000.0 or later

Windows Server Internet Information Services Library version 6.0.5000.0 or later

Windows Server Internet Information Services 2003 version 6.0.5000.0 or later

To link VMM and Operations Manager, you need the credentials of an account that is a member of the Operations Manager Administrators user role, and the credentials of an account that is a member of the VMM Administrator user role. These can be separate accounts or the same accounts. To configure a connection between VMM and Operations Manager, perform the following steps:

In the Settings workspace of the VMM console, click System Center Settings, and then click Operations Manager Server.

On the ribbon, click Properties.

On the Connection To...page of the Add Operations Manager Wizard, type the name of the Operations Manager server and a Run As account that has the appropriate permissions, as shown in Figure 4-9.

On the Connection To VMM page, specify the credentials of the account that will be used by Operations Manger to connect to the VMM server.

Complete the wizard.

Configuring the connection between Operations Manager and VMM automatically loads the Management Packs, shown in Figure 4-10, which allow you to monitor the health and performance of your private cloud’s virtualization layer.

Orchestrator integration packs

Orchestrator integration packs are collections of tasks that allow you to automate activities with different System Center products. You can download the integration packs for the System Center 2012 R2 suite of products from Microsoft’s website. Once you’ve downloaded the integration packs and extracted them to a temporary directory, you can install them by performing the following steps:

In the Orchestrator Deployment Manager, select the Integration Packs node.

Right-click the Integration Packs node and click Register IP With The Orchestrator Management Server. This will launch the Integration Pack Registration Wizard.

On the Select Integration Packs Or Hotfixes dialog, click Add.

Navigate to the location where you extracted the integration packs. You’ll need to add one at a time as you can’t add multiple integration packs using this interface. Figure 4-11 shows the integration packs that are available for the System Center 2012 R2 products.

FIGURE 4-11 Integration packs

Complete the wizard to add the integration packs. This will involve agreeing to the license terms for each integration pack.

Once the integration packs have been registered, you need to deploy them to the runbook server. To deploy integration packs to the runbook server, perform he following tasks.

In the Deployment Manager console, select the Integration Packs node and then select all of the integration packs that you want to deploy to the runbook server.

Right-click on the selected integration packs and click Deploy IP To Runbook Server Or Runbook Designer. This will launch the Integration Pack Deployment Wizard.

On the Deploy Integration Packs Or Hotfixes page, select all of the integration packs that you want to deploy to the runbook server, as shown in Figure 4-12.

FIGURE 4-12 Integration pack deployment

On the Computer Selection Details page, specify the address of the runbook server or Runbook Designer to which you wish to deploy the integration packs.

On the Installation Options page, specify when to perform the installation. The default option, shown in Figure 4-13, is to install the integration packs immediately upon completion of the wizard.

FIGURE 4-13 Installation Options

Complete the wizard to deploy the integration packs.

Operations Manager integration pack

You can configure Orchestrator to integrate with Operations Manager by configuring a connection to the Operations Manager server from the Orchestrator Management server. When you do this, you can monitor and collect information from Operations Manager alerts, which you can use when building Orchestrator runbooks. To integrate Orchestrator with Operations Manager, first install the Operations Manager integration pack. You can download this integration pack from Microsoft’s website. You’ll also need to install the Operations Manager console on the server that hosts the Runbook Designer, and verify that you can use it to make a connection to the Operations Manager server.

Once you’ve performed that step, you configure a connection from the Orchestrator Management server to the Operations Manager Management Group by performing the following steps:

In the Connection dialog box, shown in Figure 4-14, type the name of the connection, IP address or FQDN of the Operations Manager server, and then provide the credentials of an account that has access to the Operations Manager server.

Once you have configured the connection, you’ll be able to use the activities that are included in the Operations Manager integration pack when building Orchestrator runbooks. These activities are shown in Figure 4-16, and have the following functionality:

Create Alert This activity allows you to create an alert in Operations Manager.

Get Alert This activity allows you to extract data from an Operations Manager alert. Use this activity as the basis of creating runbooks that create incidents in Service Manager by extracting relevant information from alerts and using that information when creating incidents.

Get Monitor Use this activity to collect monitoring data. You can take the data extracted from this activity and use it to populate incidents in Service Manager.

Monitor Alert Use this activity to watch for specific new or updated Operations Manager alerts. You might use this when configuring a runbook to have additional steps taken when specific alerts are raised in Operations Manager during runbook execution.

Monitor State Use this activity to monitor and run when an object managed by Operations Manager has its state changed to Warning or Critical. You might use this when configuring a runbook to have additional steps taken when the state of specific Operations Manager monitored objects changes during runbook execution.

Start Maintenance Mode This activity allows you to put an Operations Manager managed object into maintenance mode. Maintenance mode is a special state that suppresses alerting. For example, you would put a server into maintenance mode when applying software updates so that Operations Manager alerts aren’t generated by the software update process.

Stop Maintenance Mode This activity allows you to take an Operations Manager managed object out of maintenance mode, so that Operations Manager alerts are no longer suppressed.

Update Alert Use this activity to update an Operations Manager alert with data. For example, you could update an Operations Manager alert with information provided in a Service Manager incident.

FIGURE 4-16 Operations Manager activities

Service Manager integration pack

You configure integration between Orchestrator and Service Manager by performing the following steps:

Ensure that the Service Manager integration pack is installed on the management server.

Click SC 2012 Service Manager in the Options menu of the Orchestrator Runbook Designer console.

On the Connections tab of the SC 2012 Service Manager dialog box, click Add.

In the Connection dialog box, shown in Figure 4-17, provide the following information. Ensure that you click Test Connection to verify that the connection to the Service Manager server functions correctly.

FIGURE 4-17 Connection properties

Name Name of the connection to the Service Manager server

Server FQDN of the Service Manager server

Credentials Credentials of an account that has permission to access the Service Manager server

Once the connection between the Orchestrator and Service Manager server is established, you can use the integration pack activities, shown in Figure 4-19, to build workflows.

FIGURE 4-19 Service Manager integration pack activities

These activities allow you to do the following:

Create Change With Template Use this activity to create a change record using an existing change template. When you use this activity, mandatory fields in the service manager change record need to be configured using Orchestrator.

Create Object This activity allows you to create a Service Manager object based on a defined class. For example, you could use this activity to create a Service Manager incident, change, or problem record.

Create Incident With Template You can use this activity to create a Service Manager incident based on an existing template. When you use this activity, mandatory fields in the Service Manager incident record need to be configured using Orchestrator.

Create Related Object You use this activity to create new Service Manager objects that have relationships to existing Service Manager objects.

Create Relationship This activity allows you to create relationships between Service Manager elements. For example, you could use it to create a relationship between an incident and a computer or user. You can also use it to relate multiple incidents with a Service Manager problem record.

Delete Relationship Use this activity to remove a relationship between Service Manager elements.

Get Activity Allows an Orchestrator runbook to collect activity records based on specific criteria.

Get Object Use this activity to search for a Service Manager activity, incident, or change records based on specific criteria.

Get Relationship Allows Orchestrator to generate a list of objects from separate classes that are related by specific criteria.

Monitor Object Allows you to configure Orchestrator to find new and updated records based on specific criteria.

Update Activity Allows you to update Service Manager activity records.

Upload Attachment Use this activity to upload a file to an existing Service Manager object. For example, you might use this activity to upload a log file so that it can be stored with the incident generated automatically by an Operations Manager alert.

Update Object You can use this activity to modify the values of a Service Manager object’s properties.

VMM integration pack

Apply Pending Service Update Apply a pending service update to a VMM service.

Configure Service Deployment Configure a VMM service for deployment. Requires the service configuration name, service template name, and deployment target.

Create Checkpoint Create a VM checkpoint. Requires the GUID of the VM.

Create New Disk Creates a new virtual hard disk. Requires you specify IDE/SCSI, Dynamic or Fixed, File Name, Size, and VM GUID of VM to which the disk should be attached.

Create New Disk From VHD Creates a new virtual hard disk from an existing virtual hard disk. Requires you specify IDE/SCSI, Dynamic or Fixed, file name of new disk, path to original disk, VM GUID of VM to which the disk should be attached.

Create Network Adapter Creates a new network adapter and attaches it to a VM. Requires the VM GUID. You can also configure additional network adapter properties such as MAC Address, MAC Address Pool, Network Tag, Virtual Network ID, VLAN ID, and Logical Network.

Create User Role Creates a VMM user role. Requires that you specify a role name and the VMM user role profile that the role will use.

Create VM From VHD Use this activity to create a VM from an existing virtual hard disk. Requires you to specify IDE or SCI, name of destination VHD, path, location of VHD from which you will be creating the VM, the name of the VM host, and the VM name.

Create VM From VM Use this activity to create a new VM from an existing VM. Requires that you specify the type of VM to create, destination, VM path, the VM GUID of the source VM, and the name to apply to the newly created VM.

Deploy Service Use this activity to create a VMM service using a VMM service template. Requires that you specify the new service’s name, and the VMM template name.

Get Checkpoint Use this activity to retrieve VM checkpoint information.

Get Cloud Get information to view information about clouds on the VMM management server.

To create Orchestrator runbooks that can use activities that perform tasks in VMM, you configure VMM integration for Orchestrator. To configure the VMM connector for Orchestrator, perform the following steps:

Ensure that the VMM integration pack is installed on the Orchestrator server.

Ensure that the VMM Administration console is installed on the Orchestrator server. It is possible to configure the connector without a local deployment of the VMM console, but this is a more complicated process than installing the console on the Orchestrator server.

Ensure that the Windows PowerShell execution policy on the Orchestrator server is set to Remote Signed.

In the Properties section of the Add Configuration dialog box, shown in Figure 4-21, configure the following settings:

VMM Administrator Console Address of the server with the VMM console.

VMM Server Address of the VMM server.

User User account of the user with permissions to the VMM server.

Domain Domain that hosts the user account.

Password Password associated with the account.

Authentication Type (Remote Only) Needs to be configured if the VMM Administrator console is not installed on the Orchestrator server. You need to enable the authentication method for WinRM using Group Policy.

Port (Remote Only) Only required if the Orchestrator runbook server doesn’t have an instance of the VMM Administrator console.

Use SSL (Remote Only) Only required if the Orchestrator runbook server doesn’t have an instance of the VMM Administrator console.

DPM Orchestrator integration pack

You can use the DPM integration pack for Orchestrator, shown in Figure 4-22, to create DPM-specific runbook automation. These activities allow you to automate the following tasks when creating an Orchestrator runbook:

Create Recovery Point Use this activity to create a recovery point for a specific data source.

Get Data Source Use this activity to determine information about available data sources.

Get Recovery Point Use this activity to determine which recovery points exist for a specific protected data source.

Get DPM Server Capacity Use this activity to determine a DPM server’s capacity.

Protect Data Source Use this activity to put a data source into protection. Use the Get Data Source activity to determine the identity of eligible data sources.

Recover SharePoint Use this activity to recover SharePoint data.

Recover SQL Use this activity to recover SQL data.

Recover VM Use this activity to recover a protected virtual machine.

Run DPM PowerShell Script Use this activity to run a DPM PowerShell script. You can use the information returned from this script in the Orchestrator runbook.

Configuring other System Center connectors

While this objective focuses on connecting Operations Manager with other System Center products and Orchestrator integration packs, it’s also possible to configure integration between other products in the System Center suite.

Orchestrator and Service Manager

Earlier in this chapter you learned how to connect Orchestrator to Service Manager, which allows you to use Orchestrator runbooks to perform tasks in Service Manager. You can also configure a connector that works the other way, between Service Manager and Orchestrator, which allows Service Manager to make reference to and utilize Orchestrator runbooks. To configure the connector between Service Manager and Orchestrator, perform the following steps:

In the Administration workspace of the Service Manager console, click Connectors.

In the Tasks pane, click Create Connector, and then click Orchestrator Connector.

On the General page of the Orchestrator Connector Wizard, enter a name for the connector.

On the Connection page, specify the Orchestrator Web Service URL as shown in Figure 4-24, and the operational database account. The URL of the Orchestrator web service will be http://computer.fqdn:81/Orchestrator2012/Orchestrator.svc. The Run As account you use must have the right to connect to Orchestrator. Ensure that you click Test Connection to verify that the connection is successful.

You will be able to verify that the process has worked by navigating to the Library workspace, and clicking the Runbooks node. Any runbooks that you’ve created on the Orchestrator will be present in this node. Figure 4-26 shows this node with a runbook present.

VMM Connector for Service Manager

Configuring the VMM connector for Service Manager will provide Service Manager with information about the VMM environment. To configure the VMM connector for Service Manager, perform the following steps:

In the Administration workspace of the Service Manager console, click Connectors.

On the General page of the Virtual Machine Manager Connector Wizard, type the connector name.

On the Connection page, shown in Figure 4-27, type the FQDN of the VMM server, and specify a Run As account. This account needs to have permissions to access VMM. Click Test Connection to verify this account.

On the Summary page, review the configuration information, and click Create.

Integrating IPAM with VMM

IPAM is a Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 role service that allows you to centralize the management of DHCP and DNS servers. You can use a single IPAM server to manage up to 150 separate DHCP servers, and up to 500 individual DNS servers. A single IPAM server is able to manage 6,000 separate DHCP scopes and 150 separate DNS zones. You can perform tasks such as creating address scopes, configuring address reservations, and managing DHCP and DNS options globally, rather than having to perform these tasks on a server-by-server basis.

You can integrate the IPAM role with VMM. When you do this, VMM synchronizes IP address settings associated with logical networks and virtual machine networks with the IPAM database. After you integrate IPAM with VMM, VMM administrators use IPAM to configure and monitor logical networks and their associated network sites and IP address pools. Tenants, however, must continue to use VMM to manage and configure any virtual machine networks that use network virtualization. Put another way, you cannot use IPAM to manage the tenant address space.

To add the IPAM server to VMM, perform the following steps:

In the Fabric workspace of the VMM console, click Network Services under Networking.

On the Home tab of the VMM console ribbon, click Add Resources, and then click Network Services.

On the Name page, provide a name that identifies the IPAM deployment.

On the Manufacturer and Model page, in the list of manufacturers click Microsoft, and in the model list select Microsoft Windows Server IP Address Management, as shown in Figure 4-28.

In this thought experiment, apply what you’ve learned about this objective. You can find answers to these questions in the “Answers” section at the end of this chapter.

You are preparing to configure the Operations Manager connector for VMM for your System Center deployment at Contoso. You have two separate servers, OM.contoso.internal and VMM.contoso.internal. Each server has its respective management console installed. When configuring the connector, you will use a single Active Directory user account. With this information in mind, answer the following questions:

Which console must you install prior to configuring the Operations Manager connector for VMM?

Which roles must the account use to configure the Operations Manager connector for VMM in Operations Manager and VMM?

Objective summary

The Operations Manager alert connector for Service Manager allows you to automatically create Service Manager incidents based on Operations Manager alerts.

Integrating Operations Manager with Virtual Machine Manager allows you to monitor your organization’s virtualization layer when you are using a System Center 2012 and System Center 2012 R2 managed private cloud.

The Operations Manager connector for VMM prerequisite requirements include the Operations Manager console to be installed on the VMM server and the installation of several management packs.

To link VMM and Operations Manager, you need the credentials of an account that is a member of the Operations Manager Administrators user role, and the credentials of an account that is a member of the VMM Administrator user role.

Orchestrator integration packs are collections of tasks that allow you to automate activities with different System Center products.

You can import integration packs for Service Manager, Operations Manager, VMM, DPM, and Configuration Manager.

Objective review

Answer the following questions to test your knowledge of the information in this objective. You can find the answers to these questions and explanations of why each answer choice is correct or incorrect in the “Answers” section at the end of this chapter.

Which of the following Operations Manager integration pack tasks would you use to extract data from an existing Operations Manager alert for use in an Orchestrator runbook?

Create Alert

Get Alert

Get Monitor

Monitor Alert

Which of the following activities from the VMM Orchestrator integration pack would you use to create a clone of an existing virtual machine hosted on a VMM managed virtualization host? (Choose the best answer.)

Deploy Service

Create VM From VM

Create VM From VHD

Create VM From Template

Which of the following activities from the DPM integration pack for Orchestrator could you use in an Orchestrator runbook to create a recovery point for a virtual machine hosted on a protected Hyper-V host?

Recover VM

Create Recovery Point

Get Recovery Point

Protect Data Source

Which of the following activities from the Configuration Manager integration pack for Orchestrator would you use to deploy a script to a virtual machine that has the Configuration Manager client installed? (Choose the most correct answer.)